by A Van Wyck
He yanked his knife free of a stumbling pirate and the burly first mate kicked the man in the chest, sending him flying over the rail and into the drink. Through a momentary lull in the fighting, he tried to gauge the tide of the battle. A lot of men were down, though he couldn’t tell which was which, so that was no help at all. The fighting must have spilled onto the pirate ship because a fire had broken out there, black smoke billowing close by the shorter masts and reaching hungrily for the sails that adorned them. Even as he watched, men hacked through the last of the ropes that had lashed the ships together and the vessels started to groan and scrape apart. Pirates scrambled in a mad dash to return to their ship and a fair number were cut down as they fled. Those who made it dove over the railing, falling four or five man heights to the lower deck. Some stragglers didn’t make it, splashing down into the ocean as the gap between ships widened. A bandy legged man, with grey hair curling from beneath his bandana and a knife clenched between his teeth, shambled at high speed toward the rail to lob something that trailed a streamer of black smoke at the pirate ship. The bottle of spirits, stoppered with a flaming rag, smashed on the unseen deck to a chorus of pained screaming.
Quite suddenly, silence returned to the ship, bar the moans of wounded crewmen and the sounds of the sea. It was over, the smoking pirate ship limping off into the fast increasing distance. His wounded ankle finally gave out and he sank gratefully to his knees, sucking in deep lungfuls of air and concentrating on not letting his heart hammer its way out of his chest.
He was aware of a cheer going up and of the captain giving orders and the sailor he’d correctly identified as the first mate bellowing them out for the crew to hear. He found himself kneeling next to the body of one of the pirates. A big man, clean shaven. Trying not to faint from exhaustion, he found himself noticing odd details simply because they were in front of him, such as the dead pirate’s absurdly well manicured nails.
A pair of legs interposed themselves between him and the dead pirate. He looked up at the captain, who still held a bloody sword in hand.
“Are you a merman?” the captain asked in passable Purli, leaning over him to get a better look, face betraying no expression.
“No, sir,” he wheezed, answering in Common.
“Be ye a frostghost, then?” the captain’s salty accent was more evident in the trader’s tongue. “Or a wave hopper? I’ve ne’er heard tell o’ a male siren. Be ye a firemist sprite?”
“No, sir,” he said again, shaking his head. “I’m just as you see me.”
The captain seemed to consider this, chewing on his curled moustaches in thought.
“Just a lad who should’nae be on me ship?”
He flinched inwardly at the subtle accusation but nodded.
“Alright then,” the captain said, straightening.
He’d forgotten about the first mate. The blow landed neatly behind his ear and the last thing he saw was the deck rushing up to meet him.
It was a surprise to wake up at all. He’d been expecting to wake up dead and drowned… if that made any sense.
He wasn’t surprised at all to see he was behind bars.
For a moment, he thought he was back in the sewers of Oaragh. It was dark, and close. The air was heavy with pitch – almost but not quite overwhelming the stink of rotting salt water and the even fainter aroma of human waste. He lay on his back on some narrow surface, his surroundings robbed of definition by darkness and fatigue. What scant light there was had filtered through layers of decking to reach him and was moth-eaten and hardly worth the name. He was somewhere in the bowels of the ship, then.
There was no way to tell how long he’d been unconscious. Days maybe… But no. The hollowness in his stomach was an accustomed beast, not yet ravenous with days of starvation. He brought his hands – two useless snarls of bandage – up to his face, noted the pink limned tenderness of fresh scabbing as his eyes adjusted… less than a day then. Perhaps only a couple of turns.
The sight of the bandages made him raise his head experimentally. His wounds had been dressed and his ribs wrapped. All things considered, that boded well. They wouldn’t be taking pains to safeguard his life if they only meant to end it. Unless they planned to do worse than kill him. Then kill him. An unpleasant thought.
He spent some time talking himself into sitting up. Myriad aches and pains throbbed with the dull promise of flaring up into a full orchestra of excruciation if he dared. He dared – he needed to know what he was in for. His entire left side was a hessian sack stuffed with broken pottery. He halfway suspected, if he looked down, he would see the hilt of a cutlass protruding from between his ribs. The effort almost defeated him. His sole saving grace was that his ribs were such exquisite agony they left him no room to process any of his other hurts. As if moving wasn’t difficult enough, breathing had become an endurance trial where bone-bruised muscles wrestled with the broken bellows that were his lungs. Breathing hurt. Not breathing was an even more unattractive option. So he compromised on holding every lungful as long as he could, snatching air in an uneven series of groans and gasps. The smell of tar was so thick it left what little air there was thin and useless. He finally managed to sit up partway, bracing a back that was on fire against the curve of the dank hull.
A brief examination revealed he lay on a narrow wooded bunk that all but filled the exceedingly tiny cell he occupied, the dimensions of which were itself dictated by the protrusion into the hold of the two ribs of the ship it was wedged between. Ankle deep black water hid the decking, moving darkly to its own microcosm of tides. Across from him he could only just make out a similar cell, set between the two opposing ribs of the ship, identical ones flanking it. All were empty. He was alone.
The lamp hooks were all cold and bare. They hadn’t even left him a candle. The soupy water ebbed and flowed like something independently alive and set the single wooden bucket beneath the bunk to knocking. That was it for furnishings. The bunk itself was barely able to accommodate his shoulders. Even so, he doubted he’d fall off – the space between the end of the bunk and the start of the bars was too small. He doubted the space was big enough to allow the bucket to be extricated and he spent a horrifying few breaths picturing the bodily contortions necessary to make use of it. He wouldn’t be up for that anytime soon. Every bit of him ached. He eased himself back down by pained increments, finally collapsing, exhausted, unto his back. He took stock of his situation.
His knives were gone, of course.
His money pouch and, more importantly, his lock pick set were still secreted down in the hold where he’d left them. Not in his hidey-hole – insurance against discovery. The bars of his cell were speckled with the kind of rust that callused but failed to corrode good iron. He wasn’t getting out of here anytime soon.
He listened to the incontinent drips of the hull, the wallowing creak of the ship and the faint thump of feet somewhere far overhead and resolved not to call out. Whenever they finally got around to him would be too soon. He didn’t have the energy to confront any serious allegations right now. If they were planning on killing him they better not do it before he’d gotten a good night’s sleep.
He tried to settle in for a wait. Even without the cramped quarters it would have been impossible to get comfortable. Lying flat made it even harder to breathe and sitting up against the curve of the hull was agony on his back. Sitting rigidly upright was a slight improvement but he couldn’t keep it up for long before working his slow, pained way back onto his back, gritting his teeth all the way. Exhausted by the effort, he dozed fitfully.
The loud clang on the meshed bars of his little prison brought him upright with a jerk. Pain, like a gleeful demon, danced a hammer tattoo across his ribs, bearing him back down under its weight. With a strangled grunt he collapsed back to the bare wood.
“Ow,” he wheezed breathlessly.
Careful not to move, he rolled his eyes at the bars and got his first real good look at the burly first mate. The man was composed
entirely of thick slabs of muscle, sun browned to almost the same shade as Jiminy. A new scar was scabbing across the shaven scalp, an addition to an already extensive collection. Flat eyes made sure no one mistook the pointed jaw for delicate.
“Said,” the man repeated himself, returning a brass bound cudgel to his belt, “cap’n want’s t’ see ye.”
The ring of keys rattled as the first mate unlocked the cell. The door swung wide with a metallic screech, pushing a wave of dark water before it. The first mate waited, not bothering to warn him against giving any trouble.
Not that he needs to, he thought, right now I couldn’t hurt a fly if I fell on it. But he eyed the heavy cudgel at the man’s belt anyway.
He struggled painfully upright, the first mate making no move to help. He felt naked without his knives. And it made his skin crawl to seem the lame lamb – with his injuries so apparent – waiting for the first nip of the jackal’s teeth. But the pain was an imperative he could neither hide nor escape. He could retain some small measure of dignity in his defiance, if not mastery, of the pain. Biting back involuntary yelps, he squared his shoulders (what was left of them) and rose as smoothly as possible. Dizziness assaulted him as he made it to his feet. Standing, he only came midway up the first mate’s chest. Taking as deep a breath as he dared, he made some effort to stand straighter.
The first mate stared down a sharp chin at him. Taking a step back, the man motioned for him to proceed.
Setting his sights firmly on the stairs leading out of the dank hold, he began slogging through the thick water with short steps. Dogging his heels, the first mate herded him verbally up two more flights of stairs and onto the main deck.
The expectant silence on deck, filled with watching eyes mercifully hidden from his dazzled sight, put him in mind of a gallows crowd. Raising a snarled hand to shield him from the red eye of the setting sun, he had halfway expected to see a dangling noose or a waiting axe stuck in a barrel. He saw neither.
Blinking furiously in the dying daylight, he could only just make out the motionless figures of sailors. Not crowded together but watching from wherever they happened to be. He could feel their hostility threading the air. Angry murmurs drifted to him.
“Get on you lot!” the first mate bellowed at his back, making him jump. “Back tae work!”
Sullen feet shuffled across the wooden deck.
The first mate steered him towards the raised deck where the three of them had made their stand but directed him down a short passage instead of up the stairs. The narrow corridor ended in a single door.
“Knock,” the first mate commanded.
He raised a swathed fist to thump at the wooden portal.
“Come,” came the curt reply.
Thankfully, the door was a levered latch and not a knob, otherwise his ungainly hands would never have managed. He pushed it open. The first mate followed on his heels as he entered, shutting the door behind them.
They were in the captain’s stateroom. It was small and utilitarian, not what he’d expected on such a massive ship. The captain’s desk was bolted to the floor and cluttered with rolls of parchment, maps and some complicated nautical instruments that smacked uncomfortably of torture implements.
The captain was sifting through the chaos on the desk, seeming intent on the map spread before him. Something that looked like a jeweler’s tongs had lost a fight with a chalk-bearing dinner fork seesawed carefully across the lined map under the captain’s direction. The man looked so much the swashbuckling seafarer, with his waxed moustache and golden earring peeking beneath the handsome curl of hair, that Jiminy scanned the chamber to see if there was a parrot anywhere in evidence.
The captain’s chair was the only one in the room, so he stood, not obviously favoring his left leg despite the grinding ache of it. The first mate leant against the door, not about to leave him alone with the captain. The usual itch between his shoulder blades at having someone unseen behind him all but drowned in the cauldron of aches and pains.
Finishing the nautical ministrations the captain put the instruments aside, giving him a full dose of attention.
He’d spent his life among some of the best swindlers, fleecers and horsemongers in the desert and had seen too much – survived too much – to believe anyone could judge the character of a man by look alone. Nevertheless, the captain’s gaze flashed with lightning wit, forecast thunderous moods and churned with a humor as dark and deadly as the sea.
“So,” the man drawled, sitting back and crossing long legs, “this bodes tae be a’ intrestin’ tale. We’ll start, methinks, with yer name, if ye please.”
He was acutely aware of the menace that discreetly underscored every courteous syllable – not yet focused, not yet sure, but very palpably present. He could almost feel the deep water lapping at his toes. This was going to be his one opportunity to talk himself out of either a very long swim or a very short drop – the captain’s eyes said so plainly. Lucky for him, then, that he’d spent many fruitful years among the best swindlers, fleecers and horsemongers the desert could offer. He bowed his head in his best approximation of proper respect.
“Davin, sir,” he supplied without hesitation.
“Davin, is it tae be?” the captain smirked, showing two gold capped incisors. “Care tae make up a last name, Davin?”
“Don’t have one, sir,” he said, truthfully. “Orphan, sir. Never knew my mam and pap, sir.” Truth had a sound all of its own that could not be mistaken for anything other. He saw the captain register the ring of truth by the twitch of one curled moustache.
“I be Rassibeal Puttin,” the man said after a moment, “captain o’ the Isus Spear. This be me first mate,” the captain nodded past his shoulder where muscle flexed in silent acknowledgment, “Master Uriban Lenk.”
Trying to recall such manners as had accidently rubbed off on him during his suddenly very short seeming life, he cast around for an appropriate reply to such a grand introduction.
“Pleased to meet you, sir,” was the best he could come up with – and felt like a one-camel caravan captain for actually saying it.
“Ha!” The captain gusted humorlessly. “Tha’ remains tae be seen.” Piercing eyes leaned forward, belying the otherwise genial expression. “Are ye a pirate, Davin No Name?” the captain clothed the blunt question in a whisper, as if inviting confidences.
He was sure to assign half a heartbeat to genuine surprise before giving and answer sprinkled lightly with indignant outrage.
“Sir! No!”
“Then how came ye tae be on me ship, Davin?” the question fell like a whip crack, startling in the wake of the last.
He bowed his head even lower. Bit his lip for good measure.
“Stowaway, sir,” he supplied in as small a voice as he could manage.
“Stowaway, ye say?”
Despite himself, he hunched under the weight of the accusation, however non-committal a tone it was delivered in. His toes were sweating with the effort of not giving in to his flight reflex. He had the sudden uncomfortable thought that the captain of a ship as big as the – the Isus Spear – must have had his share of dealings with swindlers, fleecers and similar. He swallowed hard, grateful that the action played well into the role he’d chosen.
“Yes, sir. Snuck aboard in Oaragh, sir. Been hiding in the cargo hold, sir.” It was an almost physical pain, all this “sir”-ing. Like coarse salt beneath the tongue. He repressed the urge to spit.
“An’ whereaboots in me cargo hav’ ye b’n hidin’, Davin?”
The question was asked quite casually, with not so much as a sharpening of the gaze or a strop of the tongue. Not at all like it was an invitation to prove that he was a stowaway or, conversely, that he was a liar. The gold fanged seafarer made his toes writhe in his slippers.
“Second level, sir. Way in the back. Between the bolts of silk and the crates marked with what looks like a hummingbird, sir.”
The captain glanced past him. Behind him, the door open
ed and the first mate yelled down the passage for someone by name. He could hear bare footsteps approach. Low words were exchanged. The door closed. Footsteps rushed back up the passage.
“I didn’t break anything, sir,” he rushed to reassure, playing his part. “Honest.” Inwardly though, his nerves were twanging like a sitar. He’d be seen as anything but honest if they found his lock pick kit. What would be worse? Being branded a pirate? Or a thief? Somehow he felt sure the captain wouldn’t see the distinction. His only recourse then would be to throw himself wholly upon the captain’s mercy and the ameliorating circumstances of his aid against the pirates… and he was unsure how much mercy there was to fall on. Looking at the captain, he wasn’t sure he could have picked a smaller target.
There was one hope. Although discovery had never been part of the plan, long experience had taught him always to plan for the worst. So the lock pick kit was stashed away from his hidey-hole, nearby, in a dark cranny under the stairs. It now all depended on how thoroughly they searched the hold. He kept these thoughts from his face under the captain’s neutral gaze.
“Normally,” the captain continued, speaking as if to himself, “I would’no bother. But these be no’ pirate waters, ye see. And yet: black sails o’er the rise fer days now. The Spear be faster’n most but she be a trader a’ heart an’ she be a plumply girl.” One hand absentmindedly stroked the edge of the desk as if apologizing for the remark. “They caught us up eventually.” A low growl had slunk into the captain’s voice. “Seemed madness it did – one ship takin’ on a vessel tha size o’ the Spear. By numbers alone we had’em three tae one. For a while I’d b’n afeared there’d be more laying wait in Reacher’s Bluff an’ ne’er mind the swells ye ge’ there a’ tide this time o’ year – shoals tha’ could chew a ship right out from under ye. It’s one in a thousand pirates brash enough tae try tha’.”